Air Force Brat by Susan Kiernan-Lewis Read Free Book Online Page A

my laziness or lack of ambition, I
was forced to work harder than I ever had in school before. Many
school nights found me in tears trying to commit long strings of
incomprehensible foreign words to memory.
    Even with my protected
status as an American, there were times when my teacher took her
best shot and struck home. I was supposed to always copy
Michelle’s dictee in order to improve what could be improved: my handwriting,
the occasional recognition of a familiar word, the osmosis
understanding of correct French grammar. But it was hard to be
dependent on another, to “be the dummy,” as I saw it. Very quickly
on, and to Michelle’s dismay, I insisted on writing my own dictee . A dictee was simply a
matter of Ma Soeur reading a tract to the class, who would then write it down
with correct spelling and punctuation. I remember clearly the first
(and last) time I chose to do it on my own. After I
finished, Ma Soeur invited me to the head of the class where she smiled broadly,
saying over and over again “Verrrry bad, Suzanne!” (This was an
insult in itself since she knew I understood French well enough
without having to speak to me in English) Then she read my dictee aloud to a
nervously laughing class. (They were in a bind: they knew Ma Soeur expected them
to laugh derisively at me, but they wanted my favor on the
playground later, too). Finally, she placed a ruler into my cahier and ripped out
the offending page. This was the extent of her attempt to humiliate
or punish me. I remember being embarrassed by the experience, but I
had already assessed her as a bully, and got over it
quickly.
    Later, on the playground,
my friends bustled about me, eager to make amends for having
laughed at my abysmal dictee . I was somewhat forgiving of
their betrayal since I had to imagine the dictee sounded like something a
retarded and drunk foreigner might’ve written, and because they
were a good audience to my strutting impersonation of Ma Soeur without too
many nervous looks over their shoulders.
    The playground was more
like a cement prison yard. There was certainly no playground
equipment or grass. There was just us girls and stone walls. The
girls liked to cluster around me and the other Susan, and to touch
our long hair. Most of them had pixie haircuts and pierced ears. We
all wore cotton tabliers —little smocks that kept the
ink and chalk dust from our clothes.
    Our recess out in the courtyard was the only
time all day we had to eat the lunch we had brought from home.
(There was no lunch break or cafeteria.) There were toilets in the
school but we girls were not allowed to use them. They were for the
Sisters. Instead, there was a small open-air shed at the back of
the courtyard that was covered with straw. It stank badly,
understandably, and of the few times I poked my head in to check it
out, I actually witnessed girls eating their lunch amid the stench
while they waited for their friends to finish. I never had
difficulty waiting until I got home to use the bathroom.
    Once a week, Ma Soeur would herd us
all out into the school courtyard and down the narrow alleyways to
the heart of the village to the village Catholic church. The church
in Ars is several centuries old, with a parish registry that dates
back to 1673. I sat in it every week for Mass, staring up at the
cold, forbidding stone walls, the beautiful stained glass windows,
and the ancient, faded tapestry of our beaming Lord over the
pulpit. The priest would walk laboriously up the winding stone
staircase to the pulpit and deliver Mass. We girls were always
seated in the first three rows. Once, I remember Ma Soeur leaned over
from where she always sat on the aisle and hissed to me that I was
not there to enjoy the pretty stain glass glass windows. I guess I
must have been smiling or something.
    We had Thursdays off but
attended school half days on Saturday. Every Saturday we gathered
up our desks’ china inkpots and promenaded up to where Ma Soeur stood at